I hate the term "jerk". It's really just not specific enough to categorize, or correct, bad behavior. I am always concerned about coming off as a narcissist or elitist.
I was turned down recently after a well-executed technical interview because the company was concerned that I might be a jerk, which is actually great feedback. They based this on a "vim-mode sucks" comment I left in the notes section of online editor they were using to conduct the technical round when it froze up. Whoops.
I’ve definitely been a jerk sometimes in the past, and it’s something I work on frequently with a psychiatrist. I’ve also worked for some very successful narcissists in the past, so I don’t have a lot of great examples to reference. And my socialization skills sometimes come off as stilted since one of my parents is on the spectrum. Emotionally it can be hard to tamp down on frustration, but I’ve gotten a lot better since I started seeing a psych a few years ago.
I really hope people can get back to treating each other like human beings rather than labels.
Let's play a game. Imagine you're s senior dev and interviewing another Dev today. They do well technically, but write comments in their codebase that critique your decisions (such as choice of tool, questions asked, framework used, etc). What's your thoughts on this person?
I'd not say jerk, but I would think they're not taking the process seriously. A technical test certainly isn't a place to make jokes as you don't know how they'll be perceived. Play it safe.
Anyway, your third paragraph ... It reads to me like you're passing blame on others rather than reflecting and acknowledging your choices. For example, " since one of my parents ...". No. _your_ social skills and decisions are yours. Likewise, you blame past narcissists you've worked for for not having good role models? You should know right from wrong, and making such comments during an interview is wrong.
So there are all these people in these threads who are like "I only make $175K/200K/150K, I feel like I'm grossly underpaid when I read these things."
I got you all beat.
I have 15+ experience. I am a really good coder. I can be very not humble because this is a throwaway, but everyone who has ever worked with me or gone to school with me or worked on open source with me would agree, I am very good at designing and writing and maintaining software, including understanding what software should be written, let's just accept that for the sake of discussion.
I only make around $90K.
Now, I work in the non-profit/academic sector, and have my whole career. That's what I wanted to do, and I make more than most people in my social circles even at $90K, but the work is getting old, it's not actually that "meaningful" in the end, and especially when people keep saying that I could be making literally 4-5x what I'm making.
I also these days mostly only know ruby and Rails (but that's not un-marketable right? And I certainly can learn other things, I have before. And I know ruby really well).
People here are like "Sure, but don't you want good work/life balance, maybe $175K is just fine for that." Yes, and $175K would be a fortune to me!
I literally don't understand how I get into that market. Because I have worked in academic/non-profit industry my whole career. (which I don't know if that leaves me out now. And I'm in my mid-40s, does that doom me?). I know how to get more jobs in the industries I'm in at about what I'm already getting paid, and have several times...
But I don't understand even the first step to this world where $175K is considered low-paying. I believe I have the engineering skills of anyone at that level. I don't know how to get into it. Help me out?
Stupid question but have you actually ever tried? Your tech stack seems modern enough that I'd be surprised if you couldn't get some offers from startups. New grad level at a startup generally pays 90k+ in my market so you shouldn't have a problem at least matching your current comp but I think 150-200k is probably reasonable but you might need to work remote for a company in a major city.
It is low given your level of experience and self-proclaimed proficiency, but the point is that it should be relatively straight forward to get one of these positions and double your salary.
Go look for salaries on a site like levels.fyi, find companies that pay well, apply to companies or find recruiters on linkedin and reach out to them.
I left tech at the university as soon as it started feeling like things were "getting old." And at that point I realized I should have left maybe 4 years earlier to get on with my career.
I think I will try to get back in when I am ready to retire, maybe a nice IT management position for a few years.
I don't know if it's right for everyone, but the way I did it was to practice a bunch of leetcode style questions and send out resumes go for job postings at big companies.
That was for my first tech job. Once I had that one advertised on LinkedIn (and some open source participation, and some talks at conferences - not sure what generated interest), I started getting a steady stream of unsolicited emails from recruiters. Next time I was ready to switch jobs I just responded to the ones from FAANG companies and went back to practicing leetcode.
You can probably also just reach out directly to recruiters at big companies, or ask someone you know who works at a big company to put you in touch with a recruiter or recommend you.
I think there are many straightforward answers.
Try to get the $500k jobs. If that doesn't work and you don't want to grind LC for 6 months, go for $150-200k jobs like startups. If you are as good as you say you are, you could probably study/talk your way into a job or at least figure out what you need after applying to 100 startups.
Faangs always seem to be hiring, not sure but having a LinkedIn seems to get inbound Faang recruiters, at least for me as a US dev. And startups, YC who's hiring has worked for friends, I'm sure grinding applications on aggregators like indeed, stackoverflow, angelist etc has some chance of working.
When I go there.... I see a lot of data points with ~10 years of experience paying ~$140K.
Which is more like I expected honestly -- it's just that OP was blowing my mind suggesting $175K-$225k and up... saying they are using levels.fyi as data too... or discussions here on this post with someone making $175K being considered very underpaid... every time I see salaries discussed on HN I end up confused.
